12 Plus at Kensington Health Sciences Academy and Penn Treaty School: A True K-16 Partnership

Posted by on November 22, 2013

By Eden Kainer and Albert Pak

In October, I had a conversation with Albert Pak, the Chief Operating Officer of 12 Plus, a college access non-profit started by University of Pennsylvania graduates that has a deep partnership with two of our VISTA schools, Kensington Health Sciences Academy and Penn Treaty School, which are both neighborhood public schools. 12 Plus provides one-on-one tutoring, college access counseling, and college themed special events for high school students. Albert splits his time between Kensington Health Sciences Academy and 12 Plus’ new campus, Penn Treaty. 12 Plus provides a compelling example of a K-16 partnership that started with modest beginnings but has strengthened and grown every year, embedding itself into the school community while continuing to maintain a vital connection with college campuses.

Q.    Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with 12 Plus.

A.    I grew up in northern New Jersey and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 with majors in Finance and East Asian Area Studies. After I graduated, I prepared for a career in management consulting, so I moved up to New York City and started working at Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm that specializes in financial services.
While I enjoyed my work at Oliver Wyman, I felt a desire to use my knowledge and skills to support causes about which I was passionate. I first heard about 12 Plus because I had known some of the founders [Raymond John, Abraham Kwon and Stanley Wong] from my days at Penn. In New York, I started to follow up on conversations I had had with them about 12 Plus, and I decided to take the leap in August of 2012.
When I started at 12 Plus, I had the chance to work directly with the seniors and the college enrollment efforts at Kensington Health Sciences Academy in addition to supporting the operational processes. This work included a variety of responsibilities such as guiding students with their personal statements, assisting them with their senior projects, and helping them create resumes. I served as one of the main points of contact between this graduating class of 65-70 students and 12 Plus.

I live in Fishtown now, which sits right next door to Kensington. Working at the school and living near the neighborhood has been a completely different experience from any previous volunteer work I’ve done. Throughout my time at 12 Plus I have been able witness, at a deeper level, the challenges our students face on a daily basis. Despite these obstacles, my students have shown incredible displays of resilience and persistence, and they always inspire me to push myself. Needless to say, I am so thankful to have taken the step to move down to Philadelphia and join 12 Plus.

Q. How much experience did you have working in the urban public school setting before joining the staff of 12 Plus?

A. As a sophomore, I took an ABCS [Academically Based Community Service] class at Penn taught by Professor Richard Pepino [who is the Coordinator of ABCS courses in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Penn.] In this course we learned about the effects of lead poisoning and how this affected communities in West Philadelphia. We went to schools and talked about the danger of lead poisoning in dilapidated buildings found in the city. I also volunteered at Civic House, serving at Lea Elementary School as a tutor and classroom aide. Perhaps the most influential college volunteer experience for me was through my church on campus, Grace Covenant Church. There, I led a faith-based outreach to the homeless community in Love Park. While we were at Love Park, we brought food to the homeless as a way to start conversations. The bulk of our mission, however, was to show them that there were people who cared for them and to listen to their stories. Through my conversations, I began to notice that many of these people had followed similar paths to poverty, which pointed to the systemic challenges they faced. It was through these conversations that I saw the power of combating poverty through education and addressing the cycle of poverty at its early stages.

Q.    Tell me about the history of 12 Plus, where and why did it start?

A.    This is the fourth year of 12 Plus, and there have certainly been a lot of steps in the organization’s evolution. 12 Plus started as a small pilot program with nine students in 2010 at KHSA. It began as a visceral response to what the founders saw as a real need for college access support in Philadelphia public schools. We were given an opportunity to partner with KHSA through the relationship that two of the founders, Stanley and Abraham, had with a friend, Alice Lin, a teacher at KHSA at the time. Moreover, the principal, Mr. Williams, graciously agreed to let us pitch our program to the kids. The students who signed up were paired with young professionals who served as mentors through the college application process. That first year, all nine of these students went off to college.

The next year, the founders wanted to adjust the model to make 12 Plus’ presence more known in the school. At that time, Mr. Williams, allowed us to expand our reach to 25 students and to conduct workshops in the school building itself. Out of these 25 students, 24 went onto college and one went to the military. That second year, we saw the power in having an in-school presence and were inspired to establish a positive college-going culture by having a more consistent presence.

Going into our third year, Principal Williams again took a chance with us and allowed us to expand our reach even further. He gave us the school’s old library, which he let us renovate for the 2012-2013 school year. What would eventually become the “PLUS Center” gave us the opportunity to be in a prominent location for students to come and receive everything from tutoring to college guidance. We continued to run college workshops with seniors and also piloted our whole school program by creating the PLUS Leader Program with 20 students. We trained these leaders to be positive influences on the rest of their class. The goal was to empower these students to become peer leaders in their respective grades and to inspire their classmates to excel. During the year, we took the PLUS Leaders on college visits to Penn and Temple and held events such as an outdoor Mini Olympics for them to engage in team-building.

Q. What does 12 Plus look like in the 2013-14 school year?

A. This year, we have been able to expand our services even further within KHSA by providing direct advisement to every student at each grade level in addition to the programming we did last year. We also had the privilege of expanding into Penn Treaty School. We were big supporters of the school’s philosophy and vision for its students. Moreover, we were able to continue to concentrate our efforts in the Kensington/Fishtown area, given the Penn Treaty’s proximity to KHSA. Our vision is to really spur momentum within this neighborhood and we are incredibly fortunate to work with these two schools.
We also have hired four Fellows at each site who are each responsible for a grade level. The Fellows provide advisement, individual tutoring, and teaching assistance. 12 Plus is all about relationships and we want to make sure each student has a personal connection with our Fellows.
In addition to the grade level support, we are committed to facilitating school-wide events at each school. With the support of teachers, administration, and other third parties at each school, we will be hosting a school-wide College Week, during which students learn about different post-secondary opportunities and get excited for life after high school. Moreover we are also organizing Career Week, a community service week, and Achievement Day, when we host a big assembly for students to recognize their successes throughout the year.
In addition to the Fellows, we hired a Chief Academic Officer, James Kim, and a Site Director at KHSA, Sarah Kim. James oversees academic programming at both schools and helps with creating specific workshops for each grade, tracking metrics, and conducting research. He is responsible for integrating key lessons into the programming for each grade, which include topics ranging from understanding the importance of one’s GPA and how it is relevant to the college application to writing a good personal statement.
Our efforts at KHSA are supported by the many other partners at the school, such as Margaret McLaughlin [the School Community Partnerships Coordinator VISTA], who is helping us organize our College Week by liaising with different community partners.

Q.     How does 12 Plus collaborate with school staff, particularly counselors?

A.     Our success is only the result of a joint effort. For example, last year, the counselors provided valuable profiles and backgrounds for each student, which enabled us to properly assess the postsecondary options for each student. They also played a major role in organizing the paperwork needed for applying, such as getting students’ transcripts, retrieving SAT records, and connecting us to university representatives to come in for guest presentations. On our end, we helped students craft their personal statements (in conjunction with the English teacher), write their resumes, and finalize their college lists. Later in the year, we also helped students find scholarships and complete their FAFSAs. On less of the procedural side, the counselors provided indispensable encouragement and emotional support to the students throughout the process.
With the recent budget cuts, KHSA currently has no full time counselors on staff. However, one of the counselors we had previously worked with is still in the building as a Life Skills teacher and she does a great job helping us with many of the functions she did last year even on top of her other responsibilities.

Q.    When college and university students express interest in doing similar college access work with high school students, how would suggest they get involved?

A.    First, I would recommend that they learn a lot about the issue. For me, I am constantly learning from different organizations and the literature I read. You really need to pair your desire to do good with a solid knowledge base. I would recommend students to partner with one of the many volunteer organizations on campus to get plugged in. We currently have two 12 Plus chapters at Penn and Temple. These chapters are the source of our volunteers [approximately 30] who each come in once a week to both of our schools. In addition to volunteering once a week, 12 Plus chapters host events on campuses like the Mini Olympics and campus tours. They also raise money for our organization through social media campaigns and fundraisers. If you are interested in joining our efforts, you can contact our Engagement Manager, Michele Butler, who leads all volunteer efforts for our organization.

Q.    How does 12 Plus get its funding?

A.    We are small and mainly rely on private donations and small grants. However, we will soon qualify for bigger grants after we get a few more years of metrics under our belt.

Q.    What do you think makes 12 Plus a successful partnership?

A.    12 Plus is all about the people. We bring on people who are dedicated to empowering students and are ready to go above and beyond in this effort. We believe that there are no shortcuts in the work we do, in developing relationships with students and inspiring them to pursue their goals, and our team is comprised of people who are committed to seeing this process through. Moreover, we have had the great fortune of working with administrations that have been very open to our services. We would not be where we are today without the backing of supportive administrations.

Q.    What are the plans for 12 Plus in the next few years?

A.    I think we’ll have a clearer idea of that after this year. We are constantly evaluating our services and tracking our progress. We want to want to maintain the quality of our services, so while we want to expand to other schools, we want to first make sure that we continually strengthen the administration of our services at our current partner schools.